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This was a week of milestones for Jack. On May 19th, we noticed his first tooth finally broke through! It’s the big tooth (on the top right). You can hear it clink on a glass when he drinks and on silverware when he eats. So cute!

Then on May 21, he took his first steps! He walked the three or four tentative steps between the chair and the baby gate in the living room. I was so thrilled for him that I teared up a little.

Since then, he does the same—takes a few steps, then drops and crawls the rest of the way! Haha! He knows it’s still faster to crawl.  But he’ll be tooling around all the time in no time, I’m sure.

On May 28th, we noticed that both of his top incisors are coming in, too! AND one of his bottom teeth has pushed through! Poor little buddy—they all seem to be coming in at the same time!  Must be dreadfully painful for him.  He doesn’t seem to fuss too much, though. He spends a lot of time with his fingers in his mouth, checking out his teeth. Hmmm, what are THESE things?! Hahaha!

I’m glad they’re finally coming in, but I’m going to miss my cute little toothless baby. Things seem to be happening so fast!

PS— in an unrelated note, I back-dated about 10 new posts before this one, starting with Little Mac Geek on April 27th.  They are all displaying on the front page of this blog, though.

Today we decided to head over to Clinton Lake, have a little picnic, walk a few trails, and check out the scenery.

We decided NOT to walk the trails, because none of them were shaded, and well… I’m good for about 15 minutes in the sun before burning to a crisp. And I suspect Jack is the same, though I’m not about to test that theory and let him burn! So we just hung out in the shade of a huge old tree and let Jack play.

He decided that it’d be fun to push his stroller around. And around. And around. For thirty minutes, he pushed his stroller around in a big arc.

I think he would have gone on all day if we hadn’t noticed he was starting to get a bit flushed and made him stop. Hahaha! He’s such a little He-Man. Always wanting to prove he’s a big boy and can do it himself.

It reminded me of the day we brought the stroller home. Brian took it outside to see how maneuverable it was and started pushing it around the driveway and the car.  We both commented at the time that we couldn’t BELIEVE we were going to have a baby in there soon, and would be pushing him around! Little did we know that a year later, our little “baby” would be pushing his OWN stroller around! So funny!

After Jack was born in late April ‘08, we spent at least two hours every day in the car driving back and forth from to visit him in the NICU.   We did that for 47 days.  Needless to say, you start to notice things you hadn’t ever noticed before when you spend that much time in the car.

One of the things I noticed was the sudden arrival of these beautiful lavender trees.  They seemed to be EVERYWHERE! Why hadn’t I ever noticed them before?  They were cheerful, bright, and full of hope, and it reminded me of our sweet son.  I had no idea what they were actually called at the time, so I started calling them “Jack’s Trees”.

When Jack’s first birthday rolled around, I thought it would be an AWESOME birthday gift to him if I planted one in the front yard.   So that’s exactly what I did!

It’ll be in full bloom every year on April 24 for his birthday, and then shed those blooms in early May, revealing some very lovely heart-shaped leaves. Apropos, don’t you think?

He wants to brush OUR hair, but god forbid you actually try to brush HIS.  (He hates ANYTHING touching his head! Ha!)

I don’t know TONS of babies, so I can’t say this definitively, but from all the babies I’ve ever met, Jack is by far the sweetest. He holds my hand, he touches my face, he snuggles, he lays his head on my shoulder… there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that he’s his mommy’s little lovebug. I hope he never loses that.

Today we visited a great place in the Olathe Great Mall called Monkey Bizness.  For less than $5 each, kids of all ages can go CRAZY in this place.  They have huge inflatable bouncy things everywhere— slides, bouncy basketball, everything you could possibly imagine in humongous inflatable form.  They have those playland things (they look like hamster tunnels), where they can climb up through a maze.  They even had a rope swing.  It was AWESOME.  I would have gone batshit crazy over that when I was a kid!

Of course, Jack is too small for any of that right now (I’ll take my nephews next time!), but they still had a small area for the little tikes. Jack just had a BLAST.

If there’s a hole, a rough spot, a blemish, a screw—ANYTHING that’s out of place—Jack will find it and inspect it. He is very… precise. Heh.

But his favorite of all were the SLIDES!!!

Haha! He’s such a little daredevil!  He smiled, laughed, giggled, and even SQUEALED and kicked his feet when daddy helped him down the slide.  He wanted to go again and again. He even tried to climb up the slide himself. He’s so much fun.

This is a photo of Jack wearing daddy’s work shirt (which is, of course, adorably oversized) because he gagged on a chip at On the Border Mexican Cantina (can’t really say I blame him there), and subsequently puked all over himself and the floor before we’d even ordered our food.

Sooooooo, we left a huge tip for the waitress (who was very kind, patient and understanding), and left without eating anything except for a couple tortillas.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about Brian’s wild-man hair… this all happened on a night when a sudden storm caught us all in town with golf ball-sized hail and flash flooding.  We were trying to eat and wait it out, but umm… yeah. That didn’t work out so well for us.

Ah, being a parent is so AWESOME sometimes. Heh.

Jack was able to meet his great-grandparents from New York yesterday and today, who stopped in Kansas on their way to Branson. As usual, he didn’t really want anyone holding him, so I’m sure that was disappointing for them, but he did smile a lot at both of them, and played a game with his great-grandpa where they both were pounding their fists on the table.  It was pretty cute.

It was great to see them again, and we were thrilled they were finally able to meet Jack.